by Jeroslyn JoVonn
July 29, 2025
On July 29, American Categorical Journey will roll out a revamp of its Centurion® Lounge Community eating expertise, led by ‘The Culinary Collective,’ a dream staff of Resy award-winning expertise.
Chef Kwame Onwuachi is becoming a member of forces with fellow James Beard Award winners to deliver next-level eating to American Categorical airport lounges.
Beginning July 29, American Categorical Journey will roll out a serious revamp of its Centurion® Lounge Community eating expertise, led by “The Culinary Collective,” a dream staff of Resy award-winning expertise, the cardboard firm introduced. Cooks Onwuachi, Mashama Bailey, Mike Solomonov, Sarah Grueneberg, and Overstory NYC bar director Harrison Ginsberg will craft elevated, globally impressed dishes and customized cocktails for all 15 U.S. Centurion Lounges.
“For the reason that first Centurion Lounge opened over a decade in the past, we have now been innovating to offer a singular and memorable expertise,” Audrey Hendley, president of American Categorical Journey, tells BLACK ENTERPRISE. “We all know how vital our meals and beverage choices are, and The Culinary Collective by The Centurion Lounge helps us ship that premium expertise.”
As a part of its upgraded Centurion® Lounge Community, Amex Journey is introducing Sidecar by The Centurion® Lounge, a smooth, intimate new lounge idea set to debut at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid Worldwide Airport (LAS) in 2026. The lounge will launch in Las Vegas simply as Chef Kwame debuts his first West Coast restaurant, the steakhouse Maroon.
“I believe Vegas is a clean canvas. Usually, I analysis just like the historical past of the land and create meals round that in a method that ties into my tradition,” Chef Kwame explains. “However since Vegas, was simply popped up in the midst of the desert, you possibly can deliver something to Vegas. So I considered bringing my tradition to Vegas. Steakhouses, I believe, are synonymous with Vegas, they usually work.”
“I wished to create a steakhouse that I’d need to eat in. Nicely, a Caribbean steakhouse,” he provides. “I’ve by no means seen that earlier than. And I simply suppose these flavors will work actually, very well in that idea. Not simply giving them what they need, however giving them what they want.”
On the subject of how he plans to distinguish his Centurion® Lounge menu from the opposite award-winning cooks, “it’s actually about cooking with flavors that replicate my tradition and bridging the hole between the 2 manufacturers and ensuring that I’m sustaining excellence all through,” he says.
The Bronx native and Prime Chef alum’s reward for telling tales via meals is one he appears ahead to bringing to the airport lounge expertise.
“I believe it’s vital as a result of it’s indicative of the house that I’m in, you possibly can inform a narrative, you possibly can journey an ocean on a plate,” he mentioned. “You’ll be able to style individuals’s cultures, and we are able to additionally do this with a aircraft. So I believe I’m ready to do this, telling these tales via the meals by reflecting my tradition with the delicacies.”
It’s an identical mindset Chef Mashama is taking to the Centurion® Lounge. A fellow NYC native who’s skilled in French approach and presently cooking Southern delicacies on the famend The Gray in Savannah, Georgia, the two-time James Beard winner is planting extra culinary roots on the Centurion® Lounge as she prepares to open her new restaurant L’Arrêt by The Gray in Paris.
“I wish to suppose that my meals is transient, encompassing my very own private migrations, and people of culinary traditions saved by generations of Black individuals on the transfer, creating areas and moments of hospitality alongside the way in which and within the new locations they known as house,” Mashama says. “The Culinary Collective is a chance to create that form of resonance between the artistic potentialities of journey and a meal.”
One other chef who places deep storytelling into her scrumptious menu objects, Mashama is enthusiastic about bringing the tales she tells via meals at Gray House [her hospitality group] eating places to the menu objects she has included within the Centurion® Lounge.
“At Gray Areas, we like to think about Southern meals as being on the transfer, linking culinary traditions to the migrations of Black people from the American South to the various websites and cities wherein they settled over generations,” she explains. “I all the time start with substances to search out the narratives, however what excites me is discovering surprising connections and expressing them in new methods. That is how reminiscence and historical past can encourage new encounters on the plate. I proceed to have an interest within the roles of mobility, transience, and innovation in these tales.”
Her return to Paris feels destined, as Mashama plans to faucet into the town’s wealthy ties to the Black expertise, mixing its romance, meals, and tradition.
“Paris has an enormous and different relationship to Afro-Atlantic histories,” she says. Inside these tales, the town has lengthy been acknowledged as a welcoming house for a major variety of artistic and free-thinking African-Individuals. For me, connecting my New York, Paris, and Port Metropolis Southern tales is a pure match for Gray Areas, but additionally an opportunity to deliver collectively these parts of my culinary expression.”
Because the Centurion® Lounge expands to pick out airports nationwide, it creates house for vacationers from all walks of life to attach over meals via dishes that inform tales, spark dialog, and convey individuals collectively.
“When the meal stays with you, shifts one thing in your consciousness, and even asks one thing of you, that’s a satisfying second for me,” Mashama says. “Culinary traditions is usually a bridge, however the bridge is de facto between individuals, usually strangers, who discover a option to welcome each other due to meals.”
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